by Unknown
"My wife?" I was conscious of everyone looking at me.
"I am sorry, dear lady. You have me mistaken. I am Norret Gantier."
She paused, then said, "I am seldom mistaken." She raised her walking stick and revealed the handle. Her lapis blue eyes were magnified by the lenses of an ivory lorgnette.
She lowered the stick. "We are among friends here. There is no worry of word getting back to Galt and-" She paused then. "Your wife? She did not survive?"
"Duchess Devore has not been seen in years," I said truthfully.
The awkward silence was broken by Ermutt returning with Tinka, now dressed in lrrisen finery. "Doesn't she make a perfect doll?"
"Oh yes," said Grandmother Morgannan, taking her in. "Yes, she does."
Chapter Four
The Bone Bridge
Being Galtan, I was familiar with the idea of being mistaken for a nobleman. Before the Revolution, it was a favorite among playwrights writing romantic comedies.
Nowadays it usually ended i n a date with the guillotine.
I didn't know which applied in Irrisen, but I had been looking for an entry into the noble houses. While I had planned to go with peddling perfume and fireworks, being mistaken for a long- dead duke miraculously restored to youth and health would work.
I wondered if Dr. Orontius, who collected pre-Revolutionary art, possessed an early portrait of Arjan Devore, Duke of Dabril, and had noted a resemblance to myself. It wouldn't even be that much of a coincidence-as the joke went in my hometown, there were only five men in Dabril, repeated with variations ofhairstyle and age.
I then kicked myself mentally. Forget some damned portrait: Dr. Orontius was old enough to have met Arjan Devore and know all about the duke's formulary, ruby glove, and alchemical honeymoon to lrrisen. He could have been at the wedding.
I had the guest list. Orontius's name was not on it, but then again, "Dr. Orontius" was a wizard's craft name if there ever was one. If he hadn't reinvented himself after the Revolution, I'd eat my liberty cap.
We emerged from the Four Tusks. "You will remember this from your last visit."
Grandmother Morgannan-should I call her "Byanka," I wondered?-reached into her sealskin muff and produced an ivory statuette. A goat. It lay in the palm ofher mitten, its horns and hooves bright gold like the repairs on her teeth. "You had such a lovely word for this," she said. "'Chryselephantine.'"
"Chryselephantine?" Orlin echoed.
"Ivory accented with gold," I explained. "Ivory for flesh, gold for everything else. Popular among the ancient Taldans."
"And you pretend to be a different man, 'Norret Gautier,'" Grandmother Morgannan chided, taking her albino peacock feather fan and tying its strings to the goat.
I wanted to protest that I had simply heard the word somewhere-Devore's formulary? Powdermaster Davin's figurine collecting?-but could not immediately recall where.
The fan was chryselephantine as well. The ivory handle formed the peacock's head and body, with the eyes, beak, and guardsticks composed of gold. Grandmother Morgannan snapped the fan open and tossed it and the statuette high into the air over Porcelain Street.
While not especially conversant in the exotic language of the fan, said to have originated in the distant east, I knew that throwing one meant I hate you! I could only imagine what it meant when the fan was tied to a goat.
Perhaps it only meant that the language of the fan had not made it as far as Irrisen. The feathers caught the air, spinning like a whirligig, causing the toy to drift gently down. "Trip-trap-trip!" Grandmother Morgannan doffed her right mitten and snapped her fingers thrice. "It's time to dance and skip!"
It sounded like a rhyme from a children's game. The goat grew larger, as did the peacock. Its tail fanned out, the golden guard sticks clutched in its claws growing along with it. A moment later, four golden hooves landed in the snow, followed by the golden runners of a peacock-shaped ivory sleigh. A shaggy white mountain goat capered about in the golden traces that had once been fan strings, dancing as if for sheer joy at suddenly being alive. The peacock sleigh sat proudly aloof, its albino plumes billowed out into an overarching canopy. It remained impassive as the goat pulled it around to the steps.
Kyevgeny assisted Irynya into the front bench, then aided his grandmother and sister. ''I'd best take the middle." He scooped up Tinka, placing her on his huge lap as he took his seat in the back. The gilded leaf springs bowed with his weight. Orlin went around the left while I squeezed in on the right. Soft-feathered lap robes blanketed us against the chill.
A cloud of color alit on the goat's golden horns-Irynya's parrot. "To the palace, billy-boy!" it cried.
The goat danced about, apparently considering this more merriment, until Grandmother Morgannan shook the reigns. "As the parrot commanded!" The goat took off.
"My lady," Grandmother Morgannan glanced to Irynya, "would you find it presumptuous for me to remark that you have an extremely silly familiar?"
Irynya paused, waiting until the moment a gray cat launched itself from the last railing of Porcelain Street, only to land squalling, scrabbling, and sliding down the neck of the albino peacock. "Not at all, Lady Byanka."
The cat suddenly levitated, as if an invisible hand had grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, dropping it in Grandmother Morgannan's lap. Her familiar clutched her for a moment, eyes wide, accusing all of us. Then it settled down to washing its ears and ignoring everyone, especially the peacock.
"My thanks." Grandmother Morgannan glanced over her shoulder to Orlin. "Murzik may thank you as well, but he is a cat."
Orlin nodded.
The journey to the palace took us back past the Frosthall, east along the edge of the Merchant's Quarter, then south on the Bone Road. The snow began to fall more heavily. Bewitched winds whisked it from the street.
I looked down at what I now knew was a river of skulls. I was uncertain whether to be appalled or just recognize that ifthe Gray Gardeners were to grind up all the skulls in Isarn's catacombs, we could pave every street in the city.
The palace barbican appeared to be built from solid ice, as was the palace itself, rising high out of the lake on its frozen pillar and connected to the rest of the city by only a heavily guarded crystalline causeway. Here the Bone Road ended, the only skulls present those in the heads of traitors on pikes atop the gates. I felt sorry for the ravens; Irrisen's eternal winter forced them to peck at frozen meat.
We bid adieu to Irynya and Olya, and Grandmother Morgannan invited me to sit in the front. "It is a pity I have a goat rather than a griffin. Otherwise, we could simply fly home." She pointed her spiraled ivory walking stick through the snowfall to a white tower beyond the roofs to the west. Looking through a gap between buildings, I could see a great gulf between our isle and that of the tower. "It is a lovely sleigh ride, anyway."
We went north, out of the district she called the Floes, around the splintered islets and cliffs at the south of Whitethrone, back around past the Frosthall, then south along the cliffs overlooking Glacier Lake. The snowfall lifted as we rode, and the wintry sun peeked out through the clouds, leaving Whitethrone bright and clear for the first time that day.
To our left stood a small isle, an outcropping that would have been truly impressive if not for the specter of the royal palace rising from the waves to the south. On the nearest end rose a buttressed tower with a familiar shape, supported by four immense tusks that appeared to be from two of the titanic elephants sometimes spoken of in legends. I suspected their origin was more mundane and that the Morgannans had created them via plating with ivory panels.
Then again, Irrisen was founded by a witch who traveled the worlds in a hut dancing on giant chicken legs. Taking the tusks of cosmic mammoths as souvenirs was hardly impossible where Baba Yaga was concerned.
A number oflarge buildings occupied the center of the island. At the far end sat another tower matched by its mate on this shore; the pair looked like the rooks from an immense chess set made of bones. More r
ooks perched on the merlons or wheeled in the air, mixing with ravens and crows.
"As you may recall, our family built the Bone Road," Grandmother Morgannan noted, recalling history about which she had doubtless bragged to Arjan Devore half a century before, "and after Queen Morgannan was called away by Baba Yaga, we were allowed to retain Morgannan Isle." She waved her alicorn walking stick toward several buildings in turn. "There is the Boneworks, where our serfs make the boneware. There is the Hall of Porcelain. There is the Pearl House. And there is the old Palace of Bones-Morgannan Abbey now-where we hosted you last time." She indicated a long building with flying buttresses protruding like ribs, making it appear to be some great beast that had died long ago.
"It is hard to believe that ours was once the highest tower in Whitethrone, but even the tallest turret ofthe Royal Palace will soon be overshadowed-at least if the Iron Tooth is completed before Baba Yaga's return." She pointed beyond the Ivory Tower to something glittering in the distance.
I dropped a series of monocle lenses and closed my right eye, bringing it into focus. I saw iron bars that looked like toothpicks upon which walked humans the size of aphids, trolls the size ofants, and frost giants the size ofladybugs.
"You didn't see that the last time you were here."
"No," I agreed semi-truthfully.
"Do you remember me now?"
I opened my right eye and flipped up all but the smoked lens on my left. I saw a stunning woman halfway in age and appearance between Valya and the bust of Queen Morgannan.
"How could I forget?" I forced a light laugh. "You look as lovely as ever, Byanka."
"Well, not all the time." She slipped a silver compact back inside her sealskin muff. "But a witch has her charms ... " She smiled coquettishly.
"Grandmother!" Valya protested.
Byanka pointed a finger at me. "How old do you think this man is, my dear?"
Valya glanced, uncertain. "Perhaps twenty?"
"He was far older than that when he visited fifty years ago, seeking keys to the riddle of the alchemists. Witches aren't the only ones who know how to regain youth's charms."
Valya stared at me, looking betrayed, then turned on Orlin. "How old are you?" she demanded.
"Um ... older than I look," Orlin admitted bashfully.
"I brought him back to life," I explained.
"With a philosophers' stone," Byanka hazarded correctly.
"A what?" asked Kyevgeny.
"A wondrous gemstone," his grandmother explained. "Alchemists use them to turn lead into gold and for all manner of useful tricks."
The philosophers' stone was actually a chunk of sooty rock that looked like anthracite coal. At best it could be polished up for jet. But mourning jewelry was not its main use. If broken open, it held a measure of philosophic mercury that turned lead into gold and iron into silver. Mixed with a healing potion-easily brewed with an alicorn fragment-it resurrected the dead.
I had found a stone left by the duchess. Whether she had acquired it for study or made it herself was a question I puzzled over in the odd hours of the night.
"Do you have any more of these wonderful stones?" Kyevgeny asked.
"Alas," I lamented, "it was my duchess's prize from the tree of the philosophers . I chose for mine eternal youth." If I was going to be a fraud, I might as well pick a lie that would take a while to disprove.
"Yet you cleverly joined your life with hers so you might both share your prizes," Byanka pointed out grandly then trailed off into mortified silence.
"I-" My voice caught, more from trying to get out the lie than any true grief. "I lost Anais long ago. I try not to dwell on it."
"I understand." Byanka laid a sympathetic hand on my arm. "My Rezny died fighting the barbaric Linnorm Kings. Not a day goes by that I do not find some reminder of him." She squeezed my arm. "I know how you and your duchess were linked. It takes time to pick up the pieces of a broken heart."
I nodded, hiding my lack of tears with Arjan Devore's unicornskin glove, surreptitiously popping the cork of my smelling salts. Sal volatile made tears well up like actual grief.
I brushed away my false tears, pushing up my smoked lens as I did. Byanka Morgannan caught my hand before I could drop the lens back. "Your eye," she wondered, "it is as silver as a mirror ... "
"Philosophic mercury," I explained. "It got in when I brought my brother back."
"I wonder if anyone else looks out of it," mused Valya.
Byanka glared at her granddaughter. "Valya, be good enough to tell Yelchev to lower the bridge. Have the tower ready to receive guests once we have toured the factory."
"Yes, grandmother," Valya said humbly, then took her thrush down from her hairpiece, whispering frantically.
"I know, Valya," Koliadki chirped. "I know. I know."
"Then fly, little one," she said, casting him off the cliff.
The thrush spread his wings, winging across the waves and whitecaps of the channel that led to the lake. I dropped my telescopic lenses and watched until he flew through an arrow slit in the farthest tower of bone. A minute later, a whistle screamed. A plume of steam erupted from the tower's crenellations as one side began to lower, like the gros sly distended jaw of a monolithic troll skull. The nearer tower screamed in answer and the facing side lowered as well. Crows, rooks, and ravens took to the air, croaking, as the two spans of the bridge came down.
The goat trotted gaily along the clifrs edge until we neared the tower ofbones. The goat skipped right, cutting a graceful arc in the new fallen snow, then tripped across the cobbles inside the arch of the tower itself. The slats of the bridge were human femurs. The sleigh's runners chattered across them like wooden slats, its peacock head still proudly aloof.
Standing at the far side of the bridge, blocking it easily with his mas sive bulk, was a huge troll. While most of his kind wore little in the way of clothing, this one was encased in layers ofheavy bone armor. His eyes peered out from beneath a helmet made from the skull of a walrus, its tusks sliding down to either side ofhis own. He leaned on a huge whalebone club.
"Who seeks passage to the Isle ofBone?" he recited ritually.
Byanka reined in the goat and we skidded to a stop. I became quite conscious of the bridge having no railings. She stood. "You know my sleigh, Yelchev. It's my bridge you guard."
The troll's expression didn't change, nor did he move aside. Byanka sighed heavily.
"I am Lady Byanka Morgannan, head of House Morgannan in Whitethrone, descendant of Baba Yaga herself. I claim right of passage across the Bridge of Bone."
Nodding, the troll stepped aside. As the sleigh passed, Byanka sighed again. "Trolls. It takes forever to train them, and then you find you've trained them too well..."
We parked the sled and toured the Boneworks first, the air white with bonedust, frosting everything thick as talc. Serfs carved ivory chess pieces and made hat racks out of rib cages.
The Pearl House smelled worse. Great piles of bleaching mussel shells surrounded it, as did cawing, incontinent corvids. Inside I covered my nose with the duke's glove, still scented with the duchess's perfume. Serfs shucked mussels, putting the meat in crocks. Occasional cries of jubilation accompanied the discovery of a pearl. Foremen tallied these, taking them to the more breathable side of building to be sized, graded, and strung. Other serfs polished shells and punched buttons from them, filling the air with powdered nacre, like pearlescent bonedust. I wondered if this were the secret ofWinter's Kiss.
At the Porcelain Works, I spied the unfired parts of a doll. The vaunted clay appeared to be ordinary kaolin, grayish-white and unremarkable.
Powdermaster Davin, being a dwarf, had taught me the surest test of any earth was taste. I leaned upon a counter, peering closer at the unfinished doll-a little boy-then stepped back and bit the finger of my glove, musing. The unicornskin had picked up crumbs of clay. It tasted smooth and earthy, but with an unexpected creaminess.
Calcium.
It tasted like the Cocoa Po
t's cocoa, minus the cocoa powder.
That richness I had attributed to milk. But calcium had other sources.
Limestone.
Shell.
Bone.
I dusted my fingers with a handkerchief, folded it, and tucked the specimen back in my pocket.
Our tour continued to where the bisque-fired porcelain received its first glaze, then into the room where glazed pieces were graced with porcelain paints before the second firing.
Painters added tiny gold spiders to a service netted with scarlet spiderwebs. I knew the secret of the ruby glaze to be more gold dissolved in aqua regia. Byanka called the costly service " Scarlet Spinner"-a commission from someone called the jorogumo, a group of spider-women in a far-off province of Tian Xia.
I had had quite enough of spider women already, thank you, but professed an interest in porcelain painting. Byanka let me decorate the center of a sugar bowl's web with a vignette of spiders from Galt. I painted a garden spider crawling on a spray of eglantine, adding a rainbowed raindrop as a flourish. I licked my brush to a point between each color, tasting.
"Ah, you still have Shelyn's hand!" Byanka cried delightedly.
I paused, the ruby winking on the back of my glove, then smiled in genuine appreciation. Shelyn, goddess of beauty, was Dabril's patron. It came as no surprise that her last duke had been a devotee. I had his formulary. His watercolors were exquisite, his penmanship exemplary. I had made a conscious effort to refine my cruder talents to something approaching his.
Byanka smiled back, still a beauteous young witch, only the gold-filled cracks in her teeth betraying her age. "Koliadki has informed us that tea has been made ready."
The sleigh took us to the Ivory Tower. A footman almost as tall as Kyevgeny helped Valya and Byanka alight. Once all were out, Byanka snapped her fingers, calling, "Trap trip-trap! It's time to take a nap!"